Epocrates is an athenahealth, Inc. company that provides digital clinical support to healthcare professionals. Epocrates recently announced the launch of Bugs + Drugs, which is a mobile tool that offers information to clinicians regarding different bacteria types and antibacterial susceptibility patterns by location.
How will the new mobile app help both patients and clinicians?
There is a free feature in the Epocrates mobile app that allows healthcare providers to select appropriate empiric antibiotics for every patient at the point of care, improving patient care and health outcome levels.
The new mobile app feature uses bacteria found in urine, skin, and other sample types based on geographic region. Through the robust platform, clinicians can also find appropriate antibiotic drug options, dosing, possible interactions, and safety information. The Epocrates app by athenahealth is used by 1 million healthcare providers in the US.
By using the new tool clinicians can better choose antibiotics for their patients and avoid worsening antimicrobial resistance. Bugs + Drugs collects insight from de-identified ambulatory care microbiology data within athenahealth’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) Software. athenaClinicals EMR Software is used by 145,000 clinicians with such a good reach, Epocrates is confident to provide precise, relevant bacterium data throughout the country.
The issue of antibiotic-resistant infections
Antibiotic-resistant infections exceed 2.8 million yearly in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pre-pandemic report. This unfortunately results in 35,000 deaths annually.
To combat the increasing threat of resistance, it is critical to factor in local resistance and susceptibility patterns during antibiotic prescribing decisions. In the hospital setting the data is available however in the outpatient settings, the aggregated data is not widely available.
Optimal antibiotic prescribing is possible
During this time antimicrobial resistance is increasing and the Bugs + Drugs app will fill a substantial gap in the outpatient setting. Conventionally, clinicians had to use their acumen to make guesses about the prevalence of different bacteria and whether those organisms are resistant or susceptible to several antibiotics. The digital tool in the pocket of clinicians will now help providers make informed and confident care decisions for patients through the localized susceptibility data made available by Bugs + Drugs.
